Senate Fast-Tracks Trade Bill, Obama Gets His Way

In which we learn that most victories are temporary.

They all really want it, the people with the real power at the moment, a group that includes the incumbent president of the United States, so it looks like we have a serious row of extremely greasy skids now under the Trans Pacific Partnership, the latest "free trade" land mine to be buried beneath what's left of the American middle class. Nancy Pelosi has jumped sides, although she would like you to know that she's sorry to be supporting such a terrible deal for American workers.

But with the Senate set to send a stand-alone fast-track bill to the White House Wednesday, House Democrats say they no longer have any reason to block the TAA, which they've long championed as a protection for workers harmed by trade deals. "I'm disappointed that the TAA bill isn't nearly as robust as it should be in light of a trade agreement that encompasses 40 percent of the global economy," Pelosi wrote Wednesday morning in a Dear Colleague letter to House Democrats. "[But] while we may not all vote in the same manner on TAA, I will support its passage because it can open the door to a full debate on TPP."

Lost in all of that was the fact that Obama was desperately in need of a major second-term accomplishment after watching gun control and immigration reform collapse in Congress. And that McConnell and Boehner were equally desperate to prove that they could govern and not simply obstruct. Now, there's still plenty that could go wrong. This is not the trade deal itself but rather the parameters by which Obama can negotiate the TPP. But it's a whole hell of a lot further than most people would have thought Obama and Republicans might get on ... well ... anything. Politics is a strange and totally fascinating business. This trade deal proves it. Again.

There is one thing that Barack Obama, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi and Chris Cillizza have in common. None of their jobs ever will be outsourced to a 12-year old Southeast Asian child making 85 cents a month. A real breakthrough, this is.

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